It’s been quite a while since we did an update post. So this one is full of updates and upcoming plans.

Before we get into what’s coming up next for Fantasia, we’d like to thank every one of our players for helping Fantasia get to where it is today. Without you guys we wouldn’t have made it past the first couple years, and in just over 6 months we’ll be celebrating our 8th birthday! Simply amazing stuff from everyone here! And don’t think we’re going to stop at 8 years old. No no, good people. We are going to be around for years to come. Yes, years, not months. And that is a promise.

Now, on to the news.

With Minecraft 1.13’s expected release in the next 1 to 2 months, we are busy preparing for the update. We all need to ask for patience when 1.13 does drop, as Mojang's people have made some critical changes to the backend code. As such, we will be doing a lot of waiting for plugins to update before we can update and then a lot of testing and fixing broken aspects of the game. So please be understanding when things break and let staff know if you come across a bug or a broken command. Alternatively, you can let us know via Discord's #issues_report channel.

We are sure a few of you guys have noticed, that in Fantasia we do not have Minecraft’s 1.9 Igloos, 1.10’s Fossils and 1.11’s Woodland Mansions. We’re also aware 1.12 adds a LOT of new items and structures. And for this reason and more, when we update Fantasia to 1.13, we will also be releasing a new map for Fantasia, canonically called New Fantasia. Before everyone gets nervous and cries, the current Fantasia will be kept around with no expiry date set. The name will of course, change to Old Fantasia.We sincerely hope everyone is excited for a new map and new terrain to explore. And yes, parrots will be in great supply.

A quick update on Callisto. Now while we don’t believe a new map is warranted in this case, as Callisto's map was generated with 1.12 terrain, we will be expanding the borders of the current world to include 1.13 terrain changes so everyone can enjoy the new toys. Additionally, it'll give you guys some more space.

Moving to our wonderful Discord server. We have launched the C3PO15-titled ‘Operation Community Reforums’. Essentially we want to revive the forums through Discord. We have added quite a few new channels with a few more to come in the near future. We’ve also renamed a few channels for a cleaner look. Should you guys come up with an idea for a channel, please let us know in #requests. We are always interested in new ideas.

That just about covers the plans for the future of Fantasia. We hope to see you in-game soon.

It’s that time of year again; we all feel the need to start our announcements or emails with poetic descriptions of how it’s slowly getting colder and darker outside. With how “it’s that time of year again.” Of course, we definitely have something to celebrate. Planet Earth successfully got through 2017 and happy times are approaching: Santa Claus is coming to visit and he certainly won’t be skipping Fantasia.

For the occasion, our Build Team has gone to festively extreme lengths to transform the server’s two main spawns – Fantasia and Hub – into true winter wonderlands. Fantastic work!

A Christmassy transformation of spawn(s) isn’t all that’s returning from previous years. SoccerLogann, took the initiative to organize the Christmas tree event this year. Basically, you can put a chest under the huge Christmas tree with a sign of your receiver. Naturally, you are more than welcome to place 10 chests to gift 10 people. Or many more, it’s up to you. Several Staff Members helped set this up, so a shout-out to the Staff Team for this happening. /w Christmas gets you to the right place!

While we’re on the topic of thanking Staff: us Staff Members are organizing the 12 Days event our old player Kelly did last year. From December 13th to December 24th, we invite you to participate in this Fantasian giveaway! What can you win? Rupees, VIP, in-game items, in-game builds, games: you name it! All you have to do is be online from the 13th to the 24th and you’ll automatically be entered into the raffle of the day you got online. Feel free to get online every day (the more players, the merrier the Christmas), though no two gifts out of the 12 will go to the same person, to keep it nice ‘n community-spirited.

Community-spirited, you say? What better way to interact with your fellow Fantasians than tournaments! After gifts and giveaways, that is. Micevapox and SoccerLogann are organizing a Christmas-themed building competition! Simply do /w Xmas to get there and enter to win VIP2, VIP3 or even VIP5! Of course, you can share your prize if you don’t need any more VIP upgrades! Finish your builds by December 20th at the latest and have fun! And last but not least, the Admin Team is organizing a Christmas tournament! From Christmas Spleef to Snowball Bowling to Ice Skating Parkour, you’ve got a chance to win some more good prizes. More about this later, but this would be on December 23rd.

Hey, while you’re on this website, check out our forums to learn some turkey-level juicy stuff about your fellow Fantasians! To start off, feel free to tell us how YOU celebrate Christmas. With friends? With family? By yourself (in which case, come play with us!)? Do you go for a juicy steak, some Christmas turkey or do you keep it to chocolate? What habits do you and your closest ones have? Let’s share our Christmas experiences, traditions and ideas over here: http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/forum/m/6090819/viewthread/31265894-share-your-christmas-stories-us/

]]>Greetings, Fantasians!Tue, 24 Oct 2017 21:28:00 -0400http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/4525786
http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/4525786On behalf of the Admin team, I hope you are all are doing well, and I'd like to say thank you, for continuing to make the community we have so amazing. Believe it or not, pretty soon our server will be SEVEN years old! It's hard to believe we'd be here today without the bonds we've made together throughout the years.

For many of us, the people we've met here in Fantasia have helped us through our troubles when we've needed help. For more still, those we've met have become friends for life, family even. Above all else, this is what makes Fantasia so special, and it drives us to keep going forward.

Things have been a bit quieter since school has come back in session. Even still, we're keeping ourselves busy here behind the scenes! Recently, we finished building the beautiful Artifex spawn, dedicated to BraxBludroot, former Admin and Head Architect. We're debugging broken minigames, and we've got some exciting, new ones in store. We're also proud of the success of Callisto, our most recently introduced world! As we go through these changes, and new things are introduced, we're most happy to see that our main goal is met: You all love being here!

You can expect to see some changes coming later as we try some new ideas, all to make your Fantasia experience even better! You can take advantage of our Discord channels for reporting isssues, suggestions, or just to say hi every now and then. What has truly kept us alive, all this time, is the dedication and love we see from our players and staff. Because of you, the spirit of Fantasia that has helped so many of us cannot ever be extinguished.

Here we are again, ready to launch a new game mode with its own world. Callisto.

This project was started at the same time as we were working on VIP7 so it's been a long time coming. But the main question is 'What is Callisto?'

Callisto is as close to vanilla Minecraft as we're gonna get. No peaceful mode, no flight, no warps, no economy, no residence, no pets, no scavenger, no disguises, no cosmetics, no magic carpet. You get /home and /tpa and /tpahere.

Sounds familiar? It might. If you've been a part of Fantasia for a couple years you may recall a world called Charon. Charon was a stripped back version of Fantasia, with minimal commands and only survival mode. Death was part of the world and losing items was all but guaranteed.

So why are we bringing back a hardcore world with a new name, minimal commands and why has it taken months to release?

Well we added one little thing to make things slightly more interesting. Some of you may have heard of it. SlimeFun. If you know what that means then you may be excited. If you havent heard about it, rest assured it isn't as slimy as it sounds.

SlimeFun turns a vanilla server into a modded server using vanilla items and blocks to make complex and amazing machines and items.

The best part? There is only 1 simple new command to learn: /guide. You get a book with all the machines and how to make them and what they can create.

To make this world just that little bit harder, we're starting you off with 5 hearts but you can get up to 20 (2 regular health bars).

Also Mob Grinders are NOT allowed for reasons that will become clear to you when you begin playing Callisto. You may use mob spawners but you may not alter them so killing mobs becomes easier.

Should you feel like the modded thing isn't for you, simply put your SlimeFun guide away and you have a wonderful hardcore survival world with infernal mobs and giants to play with.

Due to not being able to create residences in Callisto and to limit the amount of griefers, we have limited the world to Visitor and up, this rank requirement is in line with what Charon's rank requirements were. Staff members are still able to rollback your grief (non-SlimeFun items/blocks only), should you encounter issues. However we will NOT be refunding your items/XP should you die accidentally or through PvP in Callisto.

The Admin Team would like to thank the entire Staff Team for testing every item in Callisto's SlimeFun and to the Build Team for making a wonderful spawn. They have made this release possible.

We haven't added a new VIP rank in years - we felt as if we had released it all. But a few months ago, we started noticing that a really nice amount of cool features was starting to pile up. And since the server can always use money to stay online and improve itself, we finally started playing with the idea for VIP7 for real. Over the last two months, the Admin Team put even more work into Fantasia than normally, with VIP7 having taken focus. There are other things too, though, so please keep reading regardless!

And now we're done with that new rank. It was quite the amount of work, but we enjoyed the process and we dearly hope you guys will enjoy the results! In time for Fantasia's 7th birthday, we are hereby releasing the VIP7 rank! So what have we given the lucky future holders of that rank?

The ability to use the amazing /fun command. Get yourself a bat blaster, a Christmas elf, get yourself a chicken parachute or a portal gun! From blizzard blaster to a Christmas tree, the gadgets section of this command has it all (and much more!). And this is just one out of SIX sections. There are also tons of particle pets, particle effects, particle hats, RAINBOW SUITS that switch color and moving emoji heads!

On top of the particle hats mentioned above, the /hats command has even more particle hats/effects for you!

On top of the moving emoji heads, /heads features OVER 2000 decorative heads!

Loving the particles? Create and toggle your own particle CAPES using /cape create and cape toggle!

Want to bring even more items with you than before? /chest2! Also try /echest for the exclusive mobile ender chest!

Want more inventory organization for easier building? Scroll through your inventory per bar or per slot using /hotbar toggle!

Feel like switching servers as quickly and easily as Staff? Have the /server command!

And finally, did you love the many features of previous VIP ranks? For this ultimate VIP rank, we have decided to give people 50 warps, 30 300x300 residences at 0.003r a block, 70 /market spaces, a 3.0 multiplier on mobs and THREE Artifex plots.

This ultimate rank will come at the cost of $50. Usually we go for $5 upgrades, but VIP7 is quite the step-up! Most importantly, it will help Fantasia stay online and improve, so we do hope you understand! As always, we will work on adding more features to the VIP ranks in the future. Today is not the end of VIP7 awesomeness. Of course, the choice will always be up to you on whether or not you want to donate for any VIP rank. We greatly reward donations, but we always aim to make this server fun for players of EVERY rank. Therefore, to truly express our gratitude towards everybody for enjoying our wonderful server and community, we want to give the blue ranks some well-deserved love as well!

Adventurers now have a light variant of rainbow armor! Use /rainbow!

Explorers now have the ability to simply hold a torch to illuminate a cave! Just one torch will suffice all your light-related mining needs!

Pioneers now have the ability to sort their chests and inventories using the sorter feature! Do /sort to sort your inventory or do it while looking at a chest to organize said chest!

That concludes the major rank updates for today. We hope you will enjoy all these new features and we continue to thank you for your support - whether through your presence, your ideas, your donation(s), your staff-being or otherwise!

As we are doing better and better in terms of players, we can say we'll be here for a lot longer to come! Thus, new projects are underway. Think about new worlds, new plugins and new features. Next, we'll be looking into Auryn, your many recent suggestions and a brand-new world - more about this later. All while making sure the current server stays up to our high standards; staff-, plugin- and player-wise (thankfully you guys make this last part amazingly easy).

It’s been a crazy few months. For quite a while the news was not looking good, but we’re heading in the right direction once again. We don’t plan to let up anytime soon and have no intention to stop at where we are.

We, The Admin Team, believe our player base has a right to know what’s been happening and what we have done and continue to do to rectify it.

The server nearly ran out of donation money and we were discussing closing the server permanently.

Bladen, C3 and I had two choices. Say thank you for the 6.5 years and go our separate ways or take the time we had to try and turn our fortunes around.

Alongside our truly wonderful Staff Team we ‘bumped’ the server every day.

Bumping means to put Fantasia at the top of certain server lists to make Fantasia visible to potential new players.

We stayed online with a few other people hoping to get 1 or 2 people to join and stick around for a bit.

Not much happened in the first week of bumps. A few new players would join, most would leave shortly after.

Then something changed.

After about 2 weeks of ‘bumps’, ZePanther and his crew joined the server, boosting player numbers up past 10, giving the bumps that extra boost. Since then the server grew in numbers at a healthy pace. After all, a bigger amount of online players leads to a bigger amount of new players joining. More importantly, it causes quite a few to stick around and possiblydonate to keep the server alive.

Within 4-5 weeks of daily bumps, Fantasia went from 7 to 30 players at peak times.

The majority of players would be new, and that’s what happened over the last 5 months.

However, the question you may be asking is ‘What are we doing to improve Fantasia?’

We plan to do many things, as well as continuing to keep the server running smoothly so that every player can enjoy Fantasia. However, I will mention major 1 new feature in this post.

Before we discuss that, I would like to remind players that we are actively looking for player feedback and other ways to improve the server.

If you fill out /qform in-game, not only will you get 1,500 rupees but we will also try to find a way to implement your suggestions in a timely manner.

Now, to the main topic: This is something we believe will be a wonderful addition to the Fantasia Network.

We plan to add a brand new rank to the donation shop; somewhat uncreatively called VIP7.

This brand new VIP rank will have many perks. We will list 3 major perks of VIP7 with many more already planned which will be revealed once we are closer to the release of the rank, along with pricing.

Major Perks:

1. Extended Hotbar - No longer will you need to open your inventory to get to your precious items, just scroll through each line of your inventory never having to press E at all!

Wow another year already! I honestly can't believe it has been 6 years since Fantasia was first brought online. Thanks to the fantastic community and staff over the years Fantasia is probably one of the oldest servers still online! I can't thank you all enough for supporting Fantasia. Happy Birthday Fantasia!

You read that right! We'll be hosting a PvP tournament in the newly-constructed arena! This tournament will be on Sunday the 9th of October, at 2PM EST. We'll be working with a Smash Bros. kind of tournament scheme for 1v1 fights. Example: 8 matches -> 4 matches -> 2 matches -> Finale. Of course, you'll want some prizes to sweeten the deal. First place will get $25 Donation Shop credit, second place will get $20 DS credit and, you guessed it, third place will get $15 DS credit. Yes, spending credit on other people is allowed. If you win in one round but do not attend any of the next ones you might need to compete in, you will not be eligible for a prize. But hey, it's only a few hours this time so you should be fine. People of all ranks are allowed to compete!

Enjoy this tournament!Your Admin Team,

Bladen, C3PO15, BraxBludroot and Tiger_09

]]>Dear FantasiansSat, 16 Jul 2016 14:55:00 -0400http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/3899116
http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/3899116As most of you will know, we are currently extremely busy refreshing your Fantasia Universe experience. The biggest thing at this moment will be the release of a brand-new Fantasia world! Now, before we start with all the new things you can expect: the old Fantasia world will stay online for 6 months after the new Fantasia is released. This gives you guys the chance to move over your stuff. You can even ask Staff to help you move over your house, though Staff decides on what gets moved over and what doesn’t.

Okay, as for the new features, there are quite a lot of things in store for you. First of all, this is a fresh world, with a fresh Nether, even! We want everything to be fresh so we have decided to reset some stuff. Apart from the fresh world, the economy is to be reset and so is McMMO. Let’s be clear here, Fantasia barely ever does resets. We haven’t done economy resets in years and McMMO has never been reset before. Besides, you always get the chance to move over your stuff to a new world, so no issues there either. However, we do want to see you guys actually play the game. Currently it’s a little easy to just do close to nothing and be rich. However, and this needs to be stressed: we will NOT do resets frequently. Please do feel encouraged to build everything up, because we don’t expect resets for a long, long time. That’s not what Fantasia is about. And if you’ve ever bought a rupee package in the Donation Shop, don’t worry, we’ll give you your rupees after the reset. Just contact an Admin to get that done.

There is some more economy news, by the way. We have decided to remove the bank. Please collect your XP if you wish to keep that, because the plugin will be disabled soon. We might look for a replacement, but for now, the bank’s done. Now for some news that excites us most of all: the shop system will be changed immensely. To make it easier for you guys, NPC shops will be replaced with GUI-based shops! The same will happen with VIP shops! On top of that, Visitor and up will also be getting a varying number of spots on the player shop menu. There will even be some sort of auction-based way of selling things, which has been requested for a long time. However, we’ve made sure there won’t be chat spam by the plugin!

Okay, that’s enough in terms of economy. We’ve got more exciting features on the way. For some small ones, weather has been re-added to the server for one. If you guys don’t like it, we can remove it, otherwise it’ll be kept. Another one is the fact that the horse stables plugin is operational once again, visit http://goo.gl/Wj6lcq for more information. The last small one is about viewing distance. The server’s viewing distance is now 32 chunks. You can set your personal viewing distance to less than that in your video settings. Please do this if the 32 chunks setting makes you lag!

The big ones? Alright then. We’ve got a lot of exciting new mobs ready to challenge you in the new Fantasia world. There will be all kinds of strange (and familiar) mobs waiting for you, some might even be pretty, pretty strong… Especially nighttime will be much more dangerous. Of course, you can always play in peaceful mode and the mobs won’t bother you for one second. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this challenging aspect. And if there’s a really difficult one, gather some friends and defeat that mob together. You might even get some special loot!

Now, we have also got some VIP updates. First of all, the new Fantasia world will allow people with the VIP6 rank to finally use TNT. Now, there will be some rules to this, but it should be great fun! They now also have the ability to save XP using Scavenger, as this has been long-requested! We decided to give /hats to VIP3 and up, by the way. On top of this, we gave VIP3 and up Magic Carpet! Commands for both of these features can be found on the Commands list.

Another thing we’re very excited about is the implementation of achievements. Do you ever feel like you want another thing to work on? A challenge or two? Here’s the solution! With wacky names and cool requirements (And perhaps some rewards? Who knows? Well, we do, of course), this should be a lot of fun!

Apart from everything mentioned before, the Build Staff has been working really hard to provide you with the most amazing structures. The new Fantasia spawn will have interior and the remainder of Hub (no, this isn’t all) is very close to completion.

One final change has to do with ranks. The times to achieve all playtime-based ranks have been shortened by quite a lot. We hope players will feel more stimulated to achieve the next rank! Especially players with the pink ranks will need help of you guys, the more experienced players. We have an amazing team of Mods and SubMods, but players can always use your assistance.

Now, we are working on getting as many players as possible to make Fantasia’s community grow again, this post being proof. We will need your help, though! Please considering donating so we can improve Fantasia and please try to get your friends to join our humble community!

Next, we will be working on other worlds/projects! Be sure to check back occasionally so you don’t miss anything! Hopefully you guys will enjoy all these exciting changes and brand-new features.

All the best and to many more years of Fantasia,On behalf of the Admin Team,Bladen

]]>Fantasia ReturnsWed, 06 Jul 2016 08:04:00 -0400http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/3887388
http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/3887388Yes, already. As you all have seen, the Staff Team retired on July 4th. This was because communication between Bladen and the Team simply hadn’t been adequate. We are fixing this. In fact, we have fixed it as far as we can. The Admins are all back on board and we sincerely hope the rest of the Staff Team will follow. Bladen and the Admins have spoken and communication will no longer be an issue, we all just needed to give everything a thought. In the end, we’re all part of Fantasia; we’d like it to stay that way.

Now, in order to assure you guys we’re going to make this plan work, we’ll give you some ideas as to what we plan to do. And by plan to do, we mean “will do”.

1) The new Fantasia world will be released within a few weeks. We will have fresh terrain and the economy will be looked at. For one, we plan to use GUI-based shops (server and player-wise), because that will be way easier for you guys. The map of the current Fantasia world will not be available for download, it is simply too big. However, using the World Downloader Plugin, you will be able to get some of your builds! 2) There will be server promotion. We can’t tell you guys exactly how we’ll be doing this at this moment, but you will hear about this shortly. The aim is to once again get 20-30 players online during most times! 3) The Admins will be getting some more responsibilities. Again, no details here, but this basically means any member of the Admin Team can take a short break, just like the other Staff Members are allowed to do. 4) The website will be revamped in several ways. Expect this soon. 5) The Admins will be visible on the website and on tab. This is so you guys can see we’re around. 6) Charon and Enceladus will be shut down. They’re not too popular and we’ve got a better way of dealing with the survival aspect on the Fantasia network. Charon’s map will be available for download. Fans of survival mode will be getting some nice things in the Fantasia world. The peaceful fans won’t be bothered with them, of course! 7) Auryn, Arcadia and the Nether will be refreshed in several ways. More about this soon. 8) Bladen will be posting updates on this page more often, so that all of you are kept up to date. If need be, others amongst us Admins may post additional matters. 9) – 99) There will be plenty of other things we plan to do, but this is what we can tell you for now!

We know it seems a little strange that the Staff Team resigned and now (at least partly) returns, but like we’ve said, we all needed some time to think. See this as a fresh start, one that gave at least the Admin Team the motivation that it definitely needed to regain.

We’d like to ask you to have faith and just a little bit of patience these coming few weeks. You will be updated frequently. As for what you can do if you wish to help, the server does require funds to be kept online and the same goes for our website. Furthermore, this is the ideal time to take the questionnaire (do /qform in-game)! Even the more ‘’radical’’ ideas will be given a more careful look, so this is your chance! Even if you’ve already taken the questionnaire, go ahead and take it again! We’d be very grateful for any financial contributions and any ideas/suggestions you might have.

Thanks for reading, don’t hesitate to contact any of us if there’s anything you’d like to ask, say or suggest.

Happy 5th birthday Fantasia! I can't believe another year has already gone by. Thank you to all of you that still enjoy and support Fantasia. You are all amazing and I couldn't ask for a better community! Let's hope our dear Fantasia can survive many more years!

With Fantasia's 5th birthday around the corner (November 2nd) we decided to have a big Auryn tournament the weekend before to celebrate! The first day of the event, October 31st, will be dedicated to the survival games phase. Anyone, including staff, can join at any time during the 10 games. So you don't have to be here right at the start of the event, but it is recommended to increase your chances at winning a spot in the rest of the tournament. The rest of the games in the event will happen on the second day, November 1st. Before joining this event please make sure you can attend the second day incase you win a spot in the tournament. Subsituations are not allowed. Full details of the event can be found below:

Time:First day: October 31st at 12pm EST

Second day: November 1st at 12pm EST

Rules:

Sore losers/cheaters will not be tolerated and will get you banned from the tournament or server.

Whining about anything will get you banned from the tournament.

Just have fun!

Games:

- 8 games of Survival Games. (Modified for faster matches)- 8 winners from this game are guaranteed a spot in the tournament.- Out of those games the 10 players that finish in 2nd will battle it out for the remaining 5 spots in the tournament. Which will be decided with 5 games of NoteblockBlitz.- The 15 remaining players will play Bow Spleef till 9 winners.

- Out of the 2nd-placed players, only one player appeared. He joined the 8 winners for Spleef.- The 9 remaining players will play Spleef till 6 winners.- The 6 remaining players will play Deathcube till 3 winners.- The remaining 3 players will now duke it out in FFA.- The first player to get 3 wins gets 1st place.- The remaining 2 will continue to fight till one of them gets 3 wins for 2nd place.- The last player remaining will get 3rd place.

]]>Refresh UpdateSat, 10 Oct 2015 04:38:00 -0400http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/3568931
http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/3568931I'm sure many of you are wondering the status on the refresh and the server as a whole. I know things seem kind of dead lately with everything and that is mostly my fault. I recently went through a drastic life change that pretty much consumed all my free time and when I did get free time I chose to stream to help relieve stress. Things are much more stable and balanced now and I am able to focus on many things again which includes Fantasia!

We are still in the process of working on the things dicussed in the summer refresh project and things are coming together quite nicely. In addition to these plans we discussed other ideas that might help our dear old Fantasia become lively again. Some of the ideas discussed were:

Guests should have access to Charon and Enceladus. Done

Guests should have access to Arcadia. Done

Why these changes? Well why restrict these worlds? Sure it's nice to earn the access but I'm sure many of you felt these worlds were quite lonely after awhile. Sure you can invite some friends to Fantasia but they have to play hours to earn it too. With these changes everyone will have more to do and be able to do them with their friends right away.

There are still a few other ideas I can't share just yet but I will soon if things work out so make sure to keep checking this article for any updates.

Update:

Adventurer+ will soon have access to a different version of Artifex that offers 65x65 plots. Explorers will be able to claim 1 plot and Pioneers will be able to claim 2. WorldEdit will not be available on this Artifex and will remain a VIP5+ only perk on their Artifex. Done

]]>Summer Refresh!Thu, 25 Jun 2015 23:45:00 -0400http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/3350462
http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/3350462After a very long break I am finally back! I didn't mean to be gone as long as I was but once you get busy with something else time just flies by. First I want to apologize for the lack of updates and fixes. I must say the staff team did a great job keeping things stable. I noticed the server is not pulling in the amount of players it used to and funds are starting to dry up. To remedy this I discussed some plans with my admins.

Summer Plans:

We will be going through each world fixing and tweaking things to prefection.

Auryn: Each game will be checked and will be decided if it's too broken or boring to keep. New games will be added to replace those. Our goal here is to have many games that share the same core which will help keep things stable. Also we would like to look into having several mini tournaments.

Enceladus: Now that 1.8 is out and stable this world will get a complete terrain makeover along with a few tweaks to the overall system. It will still be hardcore survival but without the snow and ice it once had.

Long-Term Plans:

When 1.9 is released and the network is stable I plan on generating a brand new Fantasia world that will include all the new biomes. All the features from the current Fantasia will most likely be pulled over to this one and the current Fantasia world will still be accessible.

Pandora is still in the work and slowly coming together. I know this project is taking forever but like I said in the past, the rest of the server takes top priority. Also with the constant release of new very broken updates from Mojang, EULA, and the Bukkit fiasco, it just made it very hard to find the time to work on a project like that. If things continue to keep quiet and if the summer plans pull the network from the grave then we will be able to get this world released in the near future.

I hope these plans satisfy those of you that were wondering what was going on with the Fantasia. Her heart will forever beat as long as there are players.

*The final match has been postponed to a later date that will be announced soon.

Day 1 winners:

Tiger_009

Pielover19

pandaec

Four_Dee

Drybowser612

TMcManus07

Oakleyyyy

Jaxler1

Shipwreckfive

IconicVortex

Catzilla1337

Masterdan84

Kurki_FIN

KiraCTV

dnaxdevil

Day 2 games will start around 2pm EST. If you don't make it on time you will lose your spot in the tournament. Make sure to practice the games listed below!

To celebrate Fantasia's 4th birthday we will have a long overdue Auryn tournament. This will be held on the weekend of Fantasia's birthday, November 1st-2nd starting at 12pm EST both days. The 1st day will be dedicated to the survival games phase. Anyone, including staff, can join at any time during the 10 games. So you don't have to be here right at the start of the event, but it is recommended to increase your chances at winning a spot in the rest of the tournament. The rest of the tournament will happen on day 2. Before joining this event please make sure you can be here for the 2nd day of games if you win a spot and no substitutions are not allowed. If any of the winners from day 1 lose their spots for whatever reason, more survival game matches will be held to fill those spots.

Rules:

Sore losers/cheaters will not be tolerated and will get you banned from the tournament or server.

Whining about anything will get you banned from the tournament.

Just have fun!

Games:

- 10 games of Survival Games. (Modified for faster matches)- 10 winners from this game are guaranteed a spot in the tournament.- Out of those games the 10 players that finish in 2nd will battle it out for the remaining 5 spots in the tournament. Which will be decided with 5 games of ColorMatch.- The 15 remaining players will play TNT Run till 9 winners.- The 9 remaining players will play Spleef till 6 winners.- The 6 remaining players will play Deathcube till 3 winners.- The remaining 3 players will now duke it out in FFA.- The first player to get 3 wins gets 1st place.- The remaining 2 will continue to fight till one of them gets 3 wins for 2nd place.- The last player remaining will get 3rd place.

Wow 4 years already! This is surely quite the accomplishment and it wouldn't of been possible without you guys. I thank you all for making this server/community what it is today. Let's hope for many more years. Happy Birthday Fantasia!

]]>A Fair WarningTue, 23 Sep 2014 13:07:48 -0400http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/2551296
http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/2551296Oh how I love drama... especially when it's Minecraft drama... *sarcasm*. The death of Bukkit has hurt the modding community severally, many plugin developers have started to abandon ship which leaves many of the plugins we know and love dead in the water. I know some of you are aware of the Spigot mod but that mod is based on Bukkit and we've been using it for years hence why the server network thing is possible. Spigot is trying very hard to survive this dark time but it is still too early to tell what will happen. There is another mod in the works called Sponge, but it will take months for it to match the level of where Bukkit is. Plus since it is an entirely new mod it will require all plugins to be completely recoded to work with it. So with all that said, don't expect an 1.8 update in the near future or at all.

What's this mean for Fantasia?

We obviously heavily depend on Spigot. This does not mean we will die if Spigot dies. We will just remain as is till the end of time. I know I mentioned Sponge as another solution but that would require me to rebuild the entire network from the ground up with major differences. I MIGHT go that route if that project shows some promise in the future but will take a very long time. Sponge is still in its infancy and I am only one person that is unwilling to dump tons of time into this at this point. Don't get me wrong, I am still willing to manage this project but when it comes to major things I just can't dump the time in like I used to.

I know I posted an 1.8 plan recently with all these changes I planned on implementing. I still plan on doing all that but for one exception, Residence is among the abandoned projects. I am still uncertain what I want to do with that system. We could remain using the old plugin and hope it doesn't break with Spigot updates (if it survives) and without UUID support, which means if you change your name you lose your projection OR I can completely replace it with a new system. A new system would mean we would lose all current plot data, I'm sorry, I may be a wizard at manually converting data but this data is just way too much and too different. I may need to change many more plugins to ones that are still supported just in case we do happen to get an 1.8 update. I'm sorry for all the changes but there's no way around this. My duty is to keep the server up and running and as stable as possible.

Last thing I would like to touch base on is the Pandora project. I've been seeing a lot of talk about it again and how everyone is so excited about it and why is it taking so long. Pandora has/is/will remain an extremely low priority project. There are many reasons for this. A couple being the base server network is more important. We can't neglect this part because it is what new players first see and experience. Second, the Pandora project is based on a custom plugin that may need some major reworking with 1.8. I rather hold off for the possibility of 1.8 that way I don't have to wipe data etc.

I hope you all understand why these changes must happen and why . It is for the best of the network and my sanity :).

]]>Fantasia 1.8 Plans & AnswersSat, 30 Aug 2014 21:17:44 -0400http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/2511141
http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/2511141As many of you are aware. 1.8 is going to be released September 2nd. As always it will take awhile to apply this update to Fantasia for various reasons. While waiting for Bukkit to release a stable build I plan on doing some major, much needed work to the network. This includes removing or replacing old plugins with more efficient, feature-rich ones, possibly add completely new features, etc. More details on this below.

Revamp plan (NOT implemented yet, these are just plans and will be implemented over time. The old systems are still in place and functioning.):

Residence - The residence plugin was completely rewritten from the ground up. This new version seems to include most of what the old residence has except for the multi area per residence feature. Existing multi area residences will be converted to be one large one. Hopefully this version will have a proper way to expand a residence. Old residence data will be converted to work with the new system so you all don't need to worry about that. More details about this system will be posted in the future.

Virtual Stables - I plan on replacing this system completely with something less buggy and maybe with more features.

VIP Shops - I'm sorry about having to change this again but it has to be done. The current system we are using is far too difficult to convert to the UUID system, causes players to lag, and is quite resource intensive preventing me from allowing you all to gain more benefits from it. I am not certain on the details yet but what I do know now is I want to try to go in a different direction with this new system and allow you all to have more freedom. This is still in the heavy brainstorming phase so those of you with shops don't need to panic, you will have plenty of time to store your stuff.

XP Bottling System - I am working on trying to fix the current system but we may need to move to something entirely new. Just including this here so it doesn't come as a surprise. Those of you with XP bottles will have enough time to transfer the XP to the bank if the system does change.

World Retiring - To help save space on the server and possibly improve performance I plan on retiring Ancient Fantasia and possibly Old Fantasia. This means I will be zipping up these worlds and storing them on the backup server. They will not be accessible in-game after this is done. Most of you play on the main Fantasia world and the other worlds just end up confusing the new players. If any of you have anything you want moved from Old Fantasia please let a staff member know. Please do not request anything too big or something you won't even use. If you gone this long without visiting the structure then you can surely do without it. I will be letting my staff know the restrictions on the moving procedure so if they tell you no do not get mad at them. Also depending on the size of the world zips I may make them available to download.

FAQs

"Will there be a new world with the new biomes?" The idea of a new world does sound exciting but for a couple new biomes it is just not worth the effort and problems it will cause for myself and players. The current Fantasia world still has plenty of space for awhile longer. As for the materials you can only get from these new biomes, they will be made available at that NPC shops.

"Will the current world be expanded?" The current world is already way too big. It is really not worth the disk space, possible lag, etc just to have add more land for a couple biomes.

"...but I really want these biomes" Well I'm sorry but it's not worth the trouble this time. If you want to see and experience the new biomes then check them out in single player.

"Will I be able to change my name?" Yes I do plan on allowing name changes but there is no telling when that will happen. Most things are tied to your current names so if I allowed name changes right off you would lose your rank. stats, warps, lot protection, etc. I did manage to get most of these systems converted to the new UUID system but still have quite a bit of work left.

"Why does it take so long to update the server?" There is no magic update button nor is Fantasia as simple as other servers. I have to wait for Bukkit/plugins to update and I have to update our own custom plugins when I have time, not only that but I also have to make sure years of data get converted properly. There's just a lot to the process, so please be patient.

]]>The Fantasia Network Mega Update OverviewThu, 19 Jun 2014 15:46:00 -0400http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/2368049
http://www.fantasiauniverse.com/home/m/6090818/article/2368049I'm sure many of you have noticed the many additions and changes to the Fantasia network. I thought it would be a good idea to go over each thing in detail and clear up some misconceptions. I've noticed some of you have been saying that some of these changes were done because Mojang is pushing their recently modified EULA on the Minecraft community. This is false, these changes were planned way before all that. I have no plans in changing anything for the EULA till they are crystal clear of the guidelines and anything done now is because I feel it is good for the server/community. If in the future I am forced to change VIP perks cause of this EULA push I will figure out a way to keep things fair. I feel that it is unfair for you guys to suffer for something Mojang decided the change and push all of a sudden. So rest assured, I will take care of you guys as you took care of the server over these years.

With that aside, now onto the overview of all the changes:

Guest+ has been changed to Visitor. The admins and I have noticed that the very subtle change in visual rank title from Guest to Guest+ confused many of the players. So to make it more noticeable, maybe even more exciting, the rank was renamed.

Our amazing droid C3PO15 has done some excellent work on refreshing the Hub and Oracle worlds. The goal here was to make it more beautiful than it was but also make things more fluent. Many of you have already seen hub and the amazing work the build team put into it, if you haven't I suggest you take a stroll around Hub and appreciate their work. Oracle is now far more friendly to our new players and helps answer many of the questions asked when they first join. Let's hope this helps educate our new players so they can have a better experience.

The Charon/Enceladus worlds can now be accessed by Visitors and up. This was done to give the Visitor rank more meaning, along with helping these worlds thrive. The new Charon now has completely fresh land with all the biomes available in 1.7. The old Charon is still available for those that want to visit it. Enceladus has been completely refreshed and is now much bigger than before. I did change how players can heal now, added an auto sneak option, and added a global PVP stats system to both Enceladus and Charon. Details of these changes can be viewed on the World Details page under Server Information section on the menu bar above.

The Pandora world can now be accessed by Citizens and up. Some of you got upset over this change which confused me. You were failing to see the overall big picture and just being sort of greedy. This was done in an attempt to make sure Pandora will thrive when released. The system heavily depends on players and full factions. If it was kept the other way there would obviously be a lack of players around some time zones and many would just get bored of the world very quickly.

Arcadia has been completely redone and is now a Skyblock and Skygrid world available to the Explorers and up. The supernatural system was never intended to be a permanent system. It was more of an experiment of many gameplay elements to see how they would be used, problems that may arise. The data collected from this will be used to help me make decisions in the future. Anyway, I'm sure many of you know what Skyblock is but just in case, you basically start off with an island with a tree and chest with items. You have to figure out how to make something from nothing and upgrade your island. There are many challenges you can choose to complete to get even more items to help upgrade your island. Now on to Skygrid, I am not too familiar with all the mechanics of this world type but it looks pretty straight forward. Here you will start off at a random location in a world filled with blocks all around you. You have to use your parkour skills to jump around to find the blocks you want to build your home. This world comes with very few commands to keep it challenging and interesting. You can view all the details on both of these worlds at the Arcadia spawn after you press the button at /Arcadia.

Artifex can now be accessed by all ranks but those under VIP5 can only go there to fly around and view things. VIP5s can now show off their builds to everyone! This will also help some of the lower ranks decide if it is worth donating for Artifex.

We now have a Fantasia newsletter! This is not managed by myself but by a team of very dedicated Fantasians. The goal of this newsletter is to provide you guys with a quick overlook of server changes, events, and other juicy tidbits. At this time I was told they plan on releasing a new newsletter every 2 weeks. You can find the newsletter under Server Information section on the menu bar above.

Some of you may already be aware of this but Fantasia now has a help ticket system. This system can be used if you need help with something, such as reporting a grief, experienced a bug, etc. This is useful for when there are no staff online or they all happen to be busy. Staff are always notified when there are tickets in the system so your ticket won't get ignored. To learn how to use this ticket system just type /helpme on Fantasia. This system might be added to the other worlds in the future if necessary.

It's been a very long since last one but I would like to host an Auryn Tournament. Auryn has been refreshed a few months back and now has many more games since then. For those of you that weren't around for the last couple of tournaments, let me explain how this will work. Basically it is a ladder based tournament that consists of many games that will break down the overall number of participants. Those finishing in 1st, 2nd, 3rd place will receive a prize which will either be a steam game from my gift collection or something from the Donation Shop. Here is a detailed overview of the tournament:

10 games of Survival Games

10 winners from this game are guaranteed a spot in the tournament.

Out of those games the 10 players that finish in 2nd will battle it out for the remaining 5 spots in the tournament. Which will be decided with 5 games of Woolgame.

The 15 remaining players will play TNT Tag till 9 winners.

The 9 remaining players will play Spleef till 6 winners.

The 6 remaining players will play Deathcube till 3 winners.

The remaining 3 players will now duke it out in FFA.

The first player to get 3 wins gets 1st place.

The remaining 2 will continue to fight till one of them gets 3 wins for 2nd place.

The last player remaining will get 3rd place.

The actual tournament date will be announced soon. Better get some practice in!

That pretty much sums up all the changes that have been done and all I wish to share in detail at this time. I do plan on implementing a world with a unique system for the Adventurer and Pioneer ranks so please be patient while I develop ideas. 1.8 is around the corner and should be bar its ugly head around the end of July or some time in August. I have been working hard over the last few months on getting many of our systems to work with UUIDs. At this time I have completed 90% of this work and still have plenty of time to get this done. This means once I update everything to 1.8 you all should be able to change your names freely and still have access to your old data.

I hope this clears up a lot of confusion that some of you may have been experience along with understanding my thinking and intent. I really do hope you all enjoy all these additions! Anyway I've rambled enough. Questions and comments welcome!